Tiered instruction allows all students, regardless of background knowledge or readiness, to move toward the same learning outcomes and essential understandings. For each objective we teach, some students need concrete tasks to provide basic levels of understanding (knowledge, comprehension, and application from Bloom’s Taxonomy). Others are ready for more abstract activities that require more complex thinking (analysis, evaluation, synthesis).

Get started with tiered activities by designing two or three assignments for a learning objective. Each assignment will require comparable effort toward demonstrating an essential understanding, but will vary from the other assignments in the levels of thinking required or the complexity of the task.